Tag: day hiking

trip video: Yellowstone National Park – Old Faithful, Mammoth Hot Springs, & Grand Prismatic, June 2021

June 9, 2022.Reading time 1 minute.

As a companion video to a few of our day hikes at the most popular spots in Yellowstone National Park, we do our best to capture the typical road trip experience through the park. That includes plenty of geothermal features from erupting geysers to colorful pools to cascading terraces. Along our way, we also so a grizzly bear, a coyote, and plenty of bison roaming the fields. 

You can our full detailed report of our hikes below in the index as they are posted.

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trip report: Yellowstone National Park – Old Faithful & Upper Geyser Basin, May 2021

June 2, 2022.Reading time 19 minutes.

Old Faithful and Yellowstone National Park are synonymous with each other. The geyser is a must stop for all visitors to the park and as such has an entire village built around it including the historic Old Faithful Inn, visitor center, backcountry office, store, gas station, and a massive parking area. Part of what makes Old Faithful so prominent is how frequent and regular it erupts, every 2 hours, as its name suggest. However it is not the tallest at 106 to 185 feet (Wikipedia) and you can’t particularly get close to it due to its popularity these days. So while you are here, it is worth your time to check out one of the other 6 geysers whos eruptions are predicted by the NPS or the many geothermal features around the Upper Geyser Basin.

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This is the second entry of our Wyoming trip series covering our day hike around Upper Geyser Basin and visiting Old Faithful (2). You can navigate to the other parts in the index below as they are posted.

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trip report: Vermont – Colchester Causeway, October 11 2020

March 12, 2022.Reading time 9 minutes.

Our final hike of the trip was into the middle of Lake Champlain on a converted railroad bed known as the Colchester Causeway. Rather than climbing up a mountain, we had a view of them from the causeway as it crosses Mallets Bay. The change of pace, or rather elevation profile, was a welcome end to our couple weeks of working remote and visiting friends. Thanks to Jared and Domino hanging out and showing us around.

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This is part 5 of 5 of our trip out to New York and Vermont. In this part, we cover our causal walk on the Colchester Causeway and wrap up our trip with our budget. You can find the rest of the series in the index below.

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trip video: Vermont – Mt. Mansfield & Colchester Causeway, October 10 – 11 2020

November 14, 2021.Reading time 1 minute.

This is the video companions of trip to Vermont to visit our friend Jared. With good friends, it is always easy to pick up where we left off and this was no exception. We revisited Mt. Mansfield and then opted for less elevation by visiting Lake Champlain via the Colchester Causeway. In between we had a campfire and cookout to complete the autumn scene. 

You can find our full trip report of our hike in the index below.

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trip report: Vermont – Mount Mansfield, October 10 2020

November 10, 2021.Reading time 15 minutes.

For our second week on our working remote road trip, we headed across Lake Champlain into Vermont where we spent our next weekend with Jared and his new puppy Domino.

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Our hiking target was to head up Mount Mansfield via the Laura Cowles and Sunset Ridge Trails. This was the second time we visited the highest point in Vermont having done so in the summer time several years ago in 2013, to give you some indication of our opinion of the hike.

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Unlike our first visit however, the highlight of the hike this time around was how we got there and not so much the end or summit. 

This is part 4 of 5 of our trip out to New York and Vermont. In this part, we cover our hike in Vermont up Mt. Mansfield. You can find the rest of the series as they are posted in the index below.

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trip video: New York – Adirondack Mountains, October 2 – 4 2020

October 30, 2021.Reading time 1 minute.

This is the video companions of trip to the Adirondack Mountains to visit our friends Mat & Vru. They were awesome hosts taking us on a few summits in the Adirondack Mountains including Cat Mountain near Lake George, Hurricane Mountain near Lake Placid, & Owls Head Mountain near Long Lake. It was the perfect weekend to see the changing fall leaves even as we dodged the rain.

You can find our full trip report of our hike in the index below.

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trip report: New York – Owls Head Mountain, October 4 2020

October 25, 2021.Reading time 7 minutes.

To conclude our weekend with with Mat, Vru, and their dog Zoey we finished our third hike in three days. While we didn’t end up backpacking on our trip like we planned, we did get some miles in after all. This final hike with them was again in the Adirondacks, but further west as we looked to avoid the crowds near Lake Placid. We would hit up another vista and check off another fire tower on the ADK Fire Tower Challenge for them (ADK.org). The foliage was peaking just right as well making the otherwise hike through a forest more stimulating.

Thanks to Vru and Mat for putting us up and hanging out for a week.

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This is part 3 of 5 of our trip out to New York and Vermont. In this part, we cover our second day hike up to Owls Head Mountain in New York. You can find the rest of the series as they are posted in the index below.

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trip report: New York – Hurricane Mountain, October 3 2020

October 10, 2021.Reading time 10 minutes.

The weather was ominous when we set out for our second hike in the Adirondack Mountains. At the trailhead for Hurricane Mountain, the tops of the mountains around us were obscured by the clouds. It would have been easy and understandable to call it off there, but you never know what’s in store for you sometimes. For many ahead of us, it meant hiking up to a blanket of white. For us, we came to sweeping fruity pebble like mountain sides made more mystic as they were revealed behind the lifting clouds. Sometimes the luck of the draw makes the risk worth it. 

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This is part 2 of 5 of our trip out to New York and Vermont. In this part, we cover our second day hike up to Hurricane Mountain in New York. You can find the rest of the series as they are posted in the index below.

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trip report: New York – Cat Mountain, October 2 2020

October 1, 2021.Reading time 11 minutes.

 

In the early part of 2020, we had plans to visit our friends in upstate New York and Vermont wiped out by the pandemic. As the year went along, we learned a new way to travel during those pre-vaccine days in conjunction with our abilities to work remotely. That is to pod with our friend exclusively spending a longer period with them including work days. So we revived our earlier plans and podded with Vru and Mat in New York before visiting Jared in Vermont. The benefit of visiting in the fall was the foliage sweeping across the mountains. 

Our hiking plans with Mat and Vru was originally backpacking around Marcy Dam, but changed our plans to day hikes based on the weather outlook. I thought it was a pretty good decision as we were dumped on a couple times during a couple of our hikes. The first was up to Cat Mountain in the Lake George area. 

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This is part 1 of 5 of our trip out to New York and Vermont. In this part, we cover our first day hike up to Cat Mountain in New York. You can find the rest of the series as they are posted in the index below.

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trip report: Colorado – Walker Ranch loop, September 13 2020

September 7, 2021.Reading time 15 minutes.

After our 8 day off route backpacking trip into the Wind River Range, we headed back to Denver and had a full week booked for an hotel stay. Specifically, this was pre-vaccine pandemic times still and the full week was in efforts to isolate ourselves so we could see our friends Kevin, Shannon, their new born baby Wyatt, and their dog Ray. Hanging out with our friends after month of isolation at home was well worth the week of working from hotels. It was the break we needed for our mental health and socially starved souls.

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This is also a new experience for us with longer hotel stays in the form of working remote, really remote. A model I would adopt more later for subsequent trips during the never ending pandemic. While our weekend with our friends consisted mostly of drinks and food, we did get out for a hike. The Walker Ranch loop just outside of Boulder was our destination with a few views and some cascading rapids.

This is part 2 of 2 of our trip out to Wyoming and Colorado. In this part, we cover our day hike in Colorado and overall budget of our trip.

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Virginia hikes: Woodstock Reservoir via Little Stony Creek, May 15 2021

August 15, 2021.Reading time 5 minutes.

Continuing from our previous hike report of Tibbet Knob, we spent the weekend camped out along Forest Road 92 in the George Washington National Forest. 

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After our early dinner following our short hike to Tibbet Knob, we decided to explore downstream on the Stony Creek Trail next to our campsite. As the Chinese proverb goes “飯後百步走，活到九十九” or after dinner 100 steps, live to 99. Well, a little more than 100 steps in our case but the stroll out to Woodstock Reservoir was the perfect fit for that sentiment.

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Virginia & West Virginia hikes: Tibbet Knob, May 15 2021

August 4, 2021.Reading time 7 minutes.

The area around Stony Creek in the Lee Ranger District of George Washington National Forest is an go to for car camping or semi-car camping ever since we moved to D.C. Typically, we’d make the mile long hike up Little Stony Creek for our own isolated spot, but there are plenty along Forest Road 92 itself. We decided to grab one of those this time around on a last minute trip

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with a new mix of friends now that we’ve all had the jab. Hopefully this is the first of many more excursions.

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While here, we explored a couple of the smaller hikes. The first being Tibbet Knob, the lesser known outcrop on the same ridge as the popular Big Schloss.

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